The Curse of the Marquis de Sade A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary Audiobook

The Curse of the Marquis de Sade A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary [Audiobook]

The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0B64936YB | 2023 | 9 hours and 20 minutes | MP3@64 kbps | 256 MB
Author: Joel Warner
Narrator: Stephen Mendel
The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written-Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom-landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history. Described as both "one of the most important novels ever written" and "the gospel of evil," 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded execution, and inspired the word "sadism," which came to mean receiving pleasure from pain. Despite all his crimes, Sade considered this work to be his greatest transgression.

The original manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, a tiny scroll penned in the bowels of the Bastille in Paris, would embark on a centuries-spanning odyssey across Europe, passing from nineteenth-century banned book collectors to pioneering sex researchers to avant-garde artists before being hidden away from Nazi book burnings. In 2014, the world heralded its return to France when the scroll was purchased for millions by Gérard Lhéritier, the self-made son of a plumber who had used his savvy business skills to upend France's renowned rare-book market. But the sale opened the door to vendettas by the government, feuds among antiquarian booksellers, manuscript sales derailed by sabotage, a record-breaking lottery jackpot, and allegations of a decade-long billion-euro con, the specifics of which, if true, would make the scroll part of France's largest-ever Ponzi scheme.